


to be free is to be free of need

by TolkienGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, Gen, I've been really liking season 13!, Post-Episode: s13e20 Unfinished Business, conversations in the bunker, i know i'm two years late, the inevitability of death, title from a poem by Lieke Marsman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24689059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “I want better for you than that.”
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	to be free is to be free of need

He should get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow never dies, and all that. Sam has dreamt of heaven and seen hell; the two are stitched together more closely than they should be, these days.

(But how long has it been _these days_? For how many years?)

He stands up, closes all three of the books spread open on the desk in front of him—one on chaos theory, one on interdimensional spells, one tattered Melville, just because—and stifles a yawn. Sleep, restless or not: it'll do him good.

Sam feels a gravitational pull to his bed, and another back to the conversation of a quarter hour ago. He would say it’s too late to get into it tonight, except, in their life, it’s always too late—and thus, right on time.

So he bites the proverbial bullet. Doesn’t feel like yawning as much, now.

“I want better for you than that.”

Dean looks up, eyebrows first. “Than what?”

“‘ _I don’t care what happens to me, I never really have’_? Dean, come on.”

There’s that little pause: Dean Winchester emotional digestion. Dean says,

“You’re the one who just ran with the whole _we die together_ crap.”

Sam sits back down. Across from his brother.

“Yeah, and I meant it. I’m not…not an optimist. Just hate to see us in the same old patterns.”

Dean sighs. Rubs one eye with the heel of his hand. “Sammy. We’re a little deep in the rut for that.”

“So what, you don’t think the world needs Dean Winchester for as long as it can possibly have him?”

“I’m not itching to die, Sam. I’m just not pretending that looking forward is the same thing as having a future.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sometimes, Sam can still hear it in his own voice—the remnants of childhood, the arguments he used to have with Dad. Stubbornness and strategy that professors admired, that townsfolk put their trust in.

Was that what made him a vessel, too?

Too late for these questions, that’s for damn sure.

Dean says, unruffled, “It’s only ever been one way—my whole—my whole freaking life, or yours, at least. All I ever wanted was to get back to _before_. First it was, before Mom died. Then it was, before you left for Stanford. Then it was before—you know, Jess. Then it was before Dad died. On and on and on. Felt like we became different people over and over again. Hell and purgatory, and so on. Now I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re that changed. Sure, I’m a worn piece of shoe-leather at this point, inside and out, but that was always a hunter’s fate. Only difference is, I’ve accepted it.”

There’s a lot there. A lot there for the erstwhile demon-king, the soulless machine, the boy who left home because he wanted home. Sam feels old. Dean looks old. “Accepted it, huh? So that’s why we’re trying to get Mom back?”

“I’ve accepted that we don’t get normal.”

Sam has to laugh, at that. “You’re never the one who fought for normal.”

“In a way. And in another way, not. Normal to me was us. Me, you and Dad. Then it was you and me. And now—it’s still you and me.”

The heart of the matter.

The heart.

Sam says, “So can’t you understand that…that I don’t want you dying on my watch either? I’d rather have our _normal_ snuffed out at the same time, if that’s what it takes. You know I can’t get on without you.”

“I still think you’d have a better shot than me.” Dean recants, after a charged moment. “I don’t want that for you either. I just think you do the world a load of good. You’re more than a soldier, Sam. You always were. Like I said, we haven’t changed as much as we might think.”

They could keep talking. This isn’t a fight; it’s an eternal farewell, and a call to arms in one. The bunker and its solemn, quiet safety aside, Sam knows it ends bloody. He knows, he knows, he knows.

Unless you count voluntary ignorance, he’s always known.

And yet—he likes it here. Sometimes, in between everything that tears him apart, he’s even happy.

But only if there’s Dean.

“Goodnight,” he says, before he gets choky with the emotions Dean’s digesting into repressed silence. His shoulder hurts, and his left knee hurts, because they’ve been hit too many times. Some things don’t heal. Some places and some people, they don’t stay the same.

If you’re the last one who does, that’s its own kind of curse.

“Sammy,” Dean says, softened with apology. “Go to bed. I’m not dying tonight.” He shrugs, then amends, “We’re not dying tonight.”

And they don’t.

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers past 13x21 please! I'm behind.


End file.
